UK phone users check their mobiles a billion times a day

Louise Cooper

UK mobile users are collectively checking their phones more than one billion times a day, according to a new survey of consumer habits.

With more than three quarters of adults in the country now owning a smartphone (up to 76 per cent from 70 the previous year) they are increasingly the first thing we turn to in the morning and the last thing we see at night.

The Deloitte Mobile Consumer Survey looked at the phone usage of more than 3,000 Britons and found that as a nation we check our phones almost anywhere and at any time.

As a whole, two thirds of people check their phones while on public transport at least occasionally, while that soars to 80 per cent among 18-24-year-olds.

Almost as many (60 per cent) check their mobiles while they’re at work and more than half multitask using their phone and shopping.

And whether we’re out for a meal (30 per cent), meeting friends (50 per cent) or in a business meeting (12 per cent) it seems we can’t get enough of our mobiles.

For some users checking their phone is the first thing they do when they wake in the morning (12 per cent) and within 15 minutes more than half of us will have glanced at our handsets.

It’s a similar story at bedtime, with 10 per cent of users looking at their phone immediately before they go to bed and 45 per cent leaving just a 15-minute window between checking their devices and going to sleep.

The survey also showed that it’s not just alerts and notifications that have us reach for our devices. A quarter of people said they checked their phones unprompted frequently during the day, with that figure jumping to nearly 40 per cent in the 18-24 age group.